The Simple Secret: Choosing Love in a Culture of Hostility
What Else Do We Need More?
Today’s post is from my friend, Dr. Josh Graves whose newest book, The Simple Secret: Choosing Love in a Culture of Hostility has recently released — and you should read it. Josh is the lead minister for Otter Creek Church in Nashville, TN. Josh holds a doctorate from Columbia Theological Seminary. He's also written three other books: The Feast (2009), Heaven on Earth (with Chris Seidman, 2012), and How Not to Kill a Muslim (2015).
If life on planet Earth was intended to be a magical Disney experience
then God has failed us greatly. However, if life is supposed to be something
different, something harder but more beautiful, perhaps there’s hope for
all of us to continue to go deeper into the heart of God. What if, instead of
Disney, life is supposed to be a school for love? That is, what if every person,
encounter, experience, and moment of one’s life is meant to teach us what it
is like to love like God and be loved by God?
I am inviting you right now to think about a time in your life you felt the
most loved.
It might have occurred after a long sickness and the realization that
someone spent hours taking care of you, keeping you safe, warm, on the
healing journey. It might have been the night of your wedding or an encounter
with a grandparent. It might have been a reunion with a close
friend after a long period of being separate from each other’s presence.
It might entail a time someone made a massive sacrifice so that your life
would be better. When have you felt totally loved? From head to toe, body and spirit?
Go back to that space and time.
Pause. Breathe deeply.
Seriously.
Remember feeling completely loved; how it felt, sounded, smelled.
Write down everything that comes to you without judging and self-scrutiny.
Who’s there?
What do you see?
What’s happening?
What is spoken?
How do you feel?
What is unspoken but felt?
What is happening inside of you?
What sounds occur?
My imagination goes back to spending time with my paternal grandparents
as a child. As a twin, time with grandparents by myself was a big
deal. Bubble baths, Little Caesar’s pizza, ice cream, Detroit Tigers baseball
games on TV, movies, storytelling, Alabama-Auburn football jokes, Snickers,
Oreo cookies dipped in cold milk, and loud laughter. I never doubted,
for one moment, that James and Mable Graves loved me without conditions.
My grandfather always ended my stays at his house with a hug and a direct,
“I love you, grandson.” I don’t ever remember him calling me Josh in those
moments. He was telling me that I was more than Josh, I was his grandson.
I felt that. I still feel that. I was his. I was part of his home.
What are the times in my life in which I didn’t know love in my head
but felt it in my heart? When love makes it from the head to the heart the
whole person comes alive.
There are other moments.
I felt loved totally when I opened up my lunch in high school to
read a note my hospital-midnight-shift-working father had slipped into
the brown paper bag before he slipped into bed. “I love you, son. I’m so
proud of you. No matter what happens in your game tonight I love being
your dad.” There are very few moments that meant more to me as a
seventeen-year-old young man and it’s a sacred honor to now pass that
on to my sons; the simple secret.
This kind of love is wrapped into the memory of my mother staying
up all night with me when I had the flu, chicken pox, a broken wrist,
or broken heart. Never needing to say much, knowing her presence said
more than words could ever say.
It’s the video replay of my biggest game in high school basketball.
I’m the captain of the team and we are playing our biggest rival in the
state tournament. Both teams are ranked in the top twenty for the state
of Michigan. All eyes are on the court as I watch the video for the seventy-
third time. But my eyes are on the student section. There’s my twin
brother—a superb athlete himself—leading the student section, cheering
me on like a mad man. What I would give to live that kind of day with my
parents and grandparents and brother one more time. Even though my
grandparents are both deceased, and I live 550 miles from my father and
mother—their love lives on in my soul and memory. Their love now easily
flows from my heart to my three sons.
It was my fortieth birthday and my wife secretly recruited friends
from Michigan, Kansas, Texas, and Tennessee (the four states I’ve lived
in) to write notes of blessing, encouragement, and precious memories,
love notes to get me through the daunting reality of facing the second
half of life. I read every word on every page and I cried more than was
necessary. Today I keep this leather-bound gift next to my bed. It is food
to my occasionally weary soul.
What do your experiences of being loved have in common? It is in
these moments of feeling most loved that you were seen, valued, cared for,
nurtured, and affirmed. Or another way to say it is this: Love is time plus attention.
That’s the magic of loving and being loved. We all have the capacity
to give that gift to each person we encounter.
Because love is the greatest gift one human can give to another and we
are all capable of participating. Love is action. Love is a husband waking up
early to make coffee for his exhausted wife. He tastes it before giving it to
her to make sure it’s just how she likes it. Love is filling up the gas tank of
your roommate’s car for no reason other than you want them to know that
you love them. Love is hearing how someone you are crazy about says your
name, and your stomach does a summersault. Love is a couple married
for fifty-some years still holding hands in the park as they walk. Love is a
father showing up to your basketball game even though he hasn’t slept in
two nights because of hospital responsibilities. Love is a big brother giving
his little brother the last piece of pizza. Love is going to your best friends’
home after the death of their mother. You sit on their couch and help them
cry and you never speak one word.
Jesus’ understanding of love separates him from many of the great religious leaders in world history. Jesus believed it was possible to love every person we encounter: children, friends, partners, strangers, enemies . . . that it was even possibly to love ourselves. The meaning of life, according to Jesus, is to love and be loved; to love every person we encounter. The secret of life, it turns out, is not a secret at all.
Excerpt from The Simple Secret: Choosing Love in a Culture of Hostility by Joshua Graves (Cascade Publishers 2023).